Coca-Cola

The Super Bowladstravaganza disappointed me this year. The spots, which sold for a reported $4 million per 30 seconds of airtime, were so lavish, so tricked up by CGI, so weighed down by stars, so tightly loaded to spring into a joke, they suffered from bloat.

With many of the commercials posted online and scrutinized even before the CBS broadcast, they were events unto themselves – visually and conceptually splashy, but often guilty of overreaching at the expense of the message.